Rapport sur la dette grecque

Preliminary report The Truth Committee on Public Debt (Debt Truth Committee) was established on April 4, 2015, by a decision of the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Ms Zoe Konstantopoulou, who conﬁded the Scientiﬁc Coordination of its work to Dr. Eric Toussaint and the cooperation of the Committee with the European Parliament and other Parliaments and international organizations to MEP Ms Soﬁa Sakorafa. Members of the Committee have convened in public and closed sessions, to produce this preliminary report, under the supervision of the scientiﬁc coordinator and with the cooperation and input of other members of the Committee, as well as experts and contributors. The preliminary report chapters were coordinated by: BantekasIlias ContargyrisThanos FattorelliMaria Lucia HussonMichel LaskaridisChristina MarchetosSpyros OnaranOzlem TombazosStavros VatikiotisLeonidas VivienRenaud With contributions from: AktypisHéraclès AlbarracinDaniel BonfondOlivier BorjaDiego CutillasSergi GonçalvesAlves Raphaël GoutziomitrosFotis KasimatisGiorgos KazakosAris LuminaCephas MitraliasSonia SaurinPatrick SkliasPantelis SpanouDespoina StromblosNikos TzitzikouSoﬁa The authors are grateful for the advice and input received from other members of the Truth Committee on Public Debt as well as other experts, who contributed to the Committee’s work during the public sessions and hearings and the closed or informal consultations.

The Truth Committee on Public Debt (Debt Truth Committee) was established on April 4, 2015, by a decision of the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Ms Zoe Konstantopoulou, who conﬁded the Scientiﬁc Coordination of its work to Dr. Eric Toussaint and the cooperation of the Committee with the European Parliament and other Parliaments and international organizations to MEP Ms Soﬁa Sakorafa.

Members of the Committee have convened in public and closed sessions, to produce this preliminary report, under the supervision of the scientiﬁc coordinator and with the cooperation and input of other members of the Committee, as well as experts and contributors.

The authors are grateful for the advice and input received from other members of the Truth Committee on Public Debt as well as other experts, who contributed to the Committee’s work during the public sessions and hearings and the closed or informal consultations.

n June 2015 Greece stands at a crossroads of choosing between furthering the failed macroe-tjIhefdebt.chainsoecnissraeyeviFadcminocoehetgoartrpmtnesu,theganesbmmemsuntrecomainyre conomic adjustment programmemes imposed by the creditors or making a real change to break -deeply cemented in an economic, social, democratic and ecological crisis. The black box of debt has re-mained closed, and until a few months ago no author-ity, Greek or international, had sought to bring to light the truth about how and why Greece was subjected to the Troika regime. The debt, in the name of which nothing has been spared, remains the rule through which neoliberal adjustment is imposed, and the deepest and longest recession experienced in Europe during peacetime. There is an immediate democratic need and social responsibility to address a range of legal, social and economic issues that demand proper consideration. In response, the President of the Hellenic Parliament established the Truth Committee on Public Debt (Debt Truth Committee) in April 2015, mandating the investigation into the creation and the increase of public debt, the way and reasons for which debt was contracted, and the impact that the conditionalities attached to the loans have had on the economy and the population. The Truth Committee has a mandate to raise awareness of issues pertaining to the Greek debt, both domestically and internationally, and to formulate arguments and options concerning the cancellation of the debt. The research of the Committee presented in this preliminary report sheds light on the fact that the entire adjustment programmeme, to which Greece has been subjugated, was and remains a politically orientated programmeme. The technical exercise surrounding macroeconomic variables and debt pro-jections, îgures directly relating to people’s lives and livelihoods, has enabled discussions around the debt to remain at a technical level mainly revolving around the argument that the policies imposed on Greece will

3

improve its capacity to pay the debt back. The facts presented in this report challenge this argument. All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay this debt îrst and foremost because the debt emerging from the Troi-ka’s arrangements is a direct infringement on the fun-damental human rights of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious. It has also come to the understanding of the Com-mittee that the unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to the international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate media. Yet, the Greek authorities, together with some other governments in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of public debt in 2010 in order to pro-tect înancial institutions. The corporate media hid the truth from the public by depicting a situation in which the bailout was argued to beneît Greece, whilst spinning a narrative intended to portray the popula-tion as deservers of their own wrongdoings. Bailout funds provided in both programmemes of 2010 and 2012 have been externally managed through complicated schemes, preventing any îscal autono-my. The use of the bailout money is strictly dictated by the creditors, and so, it is revealing that less than 10% of these funds have been destined to the gov-ernment’s current expenditure. This preliminary report presents a primary map-ping out of the key problems and issues associated with the public debt, and notes key legal violations associated with the contracting of the debt; it also traces out the legal foundations, on which unilateral suspension of the debt payments can be based. The îndings are presented in nine chapters structured as follows: Chapter 1, Debt before the Troika,analyses the growth of the Greek public debt since the 1980s. It

concludes that the increase in debt was not due to ex-cessive public spending, which in fact remained lower than the public spending of other Eurozone countries, but rather due to the payment of extremely high rates of interest to creditors, excessive and unjustiîed mili-tary spending, loss of tax revenues due to illicit capital outows, state recapitalization of private banks, and the international imbalances created via the aws in the design of the Monetary Union itself. Adopting the euro led to a drastic increase of private debt in Greece to which major European private banks as well as the Greek banks were exposed. A growing banking crisis contributed to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. George Papandreou’s government helped to present the elements of a banking crisis as a sovereign debt crisis in 2009 by emphasizing and boosting the public deîcit and debt. Chapter 2,Ev of Greek public olution debt during 2010-2015,concludes that the îrst loan agreement of 2010, aimed primarily to rescue the Greek and other European private banks, and to allow the banks to reduce their exposure to Greek govern-ment bonds. Chapter 3,Greek public debt by credito r in 2015,presents the contentious nature of Greece’s current debt, delineating the loans’ key characteris-tics, which are further analysed in Chapter 8. Chapter 4,System Mechanism in Debt Greecereveals the mechanisms devised by the agree-ments that were implemented since May 2010. They created a substantial amount of new debt to bilateral creditors and the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), whilst generating abusive costs thus deepen-ing the crisis further. The mechanisms disclose how the majority of borrowed funds were transferred di-rectly to înancial institutions. Rather than beneîtting Greece, they have accelerated the privatization pro-cess, through the use of înancial instruments. Chapter 5, Conditionalities against sustain-ability,presents how the creditors imposed intru-sive conditionalities attached to the loan agreements, which led directly to the economic unviability and un-sustainability of debt. These conditionalities, on which the creditors still insist, have not only contributed to lower GDP as well as higher public borrowing, hence a higher public debt/GDP making Greece’s debt more unsustainable, but also engineered dramatic changes in the society, and caused a humanitarian crisis. The Greek public debt can be considered as totally unsus-tainable at present. Chapter 6, Impact of the “bailout pro-grammes” on human rights, concludes that the measures implemented under the “bailout pro-

4

grammes” have directly aected living conditions of the people and violated human rights, which Greece and its partners are obliged to respect, protect and promote under domestic, regional and international law. The drastic adjustments, imposed on the Greek economy and society as a whole, have brought about a rapid deterioration of living standards, and remain incompatible with social justice, social cohesion, de-mocracy and human rights. Chapter 7,Legal issues surrounding the MOU and Loan Agreements,argues there has been a breach of human rights obligations on the part of Greece itself and the lenders, that is the Euro Area (Lender) Member States, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, who imposed these measures on Greece. All these actors failed to assess the human rights violations as an outcome of the policies they obliged Greece to pursue, and also directly violated the Greek constitution by eectively stripping Greece of most of its sovereign rights. The agreements con-tain abusive clauses, eectively coercing Greece to surrender signiîcant aspects of its sovereignty. This is imprinted in the choice of the English law as gov-erning law for those agreements, which facilitated the circumvention of the Greek Constitution and in-ternational human rights obligations. Conicts with human rights and customary obligations, several in-dications of contracting parties acting in bad faith, which together with the unconscionable character of the agreements, render these agreements invalid. Chapter 8,Asse ssment of the Debts as regards illegtimacy,odiousness, illegality, and un-sustainability, provides an assessment of the Greek public debt according to the deînitions regarding illegitimate, odious, illegal, and unsustainable debt adopted by the Committee. Chapter 8 concludes that the Greek public debt as of June 2015 is unsustainable, since Greece is cur-rently unable to service its debt without seriously impairing its capacity to fulîll its basic human rights obligations. Furthermore, for each creditor, the report provides evidence of indicative cases of illegal, illegit-imate and odious debts. Debt to the IMF should be considered illegal since its concession breached the IMF’s own statutes, and its conditions breached the Greek Constitution, inter-national customary law, and treaties to which Greece is a party. It is also illegitimate, since conditions included policy prescriptions that infringed human rights obligations. Finally, it is odious since the IMF knew that the imposed measures were undemocratic, ineective, and would lead to serious violations of socio-economic rights.

Debts to the ECB should be considered illegal since the ECB over-stepped its mandate by imposing the ap-plication of macroeconomic adjustment programmes (e.g. labour market deregulation) via its participation in the Troika. Debts to the ECB are also illegitimate and odious, since the principal raison d’etre of the Securities Market Programmeme (SMP) was to serve the interests of the înancial institutions, allowing the major European and Greek private banks to dispose of their Greek bonds. The EFSF engages in cash-less loans which should be considered illegal because Article 122(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) was violated, and further they breach several socio-economic rights and civil liberties. Moreover, the EFSF Framework Agreement 2010 and the Master Financial Assistance Agreement of 2012 contain sev-eral abusive clauses revealing clear misconduct on the part of the lender. The EFSF also acts against dem-ocratic principles, rendering these particular debts illegitimate and odious. The bilateral loans should be considered illegal since they violate the procedure provided by the Greek constitution. The loans involved clear misconduct by the lenders, and had conditions that contravened law or public policy. Both EU law and international law were breached in order to sideline human rights in the design of the macroeconomic programmes. The bilateral loans are furthermore illegitimate, since they were not used for the beneît of the population, but merely enabled the private creditors of Greece to be bailed out. Finally, the bilateral loans are odious since the lender states and the European Commission knew of potential violations, but in 2010 and 2012 avoided to assess the human rights impacts of the macroeconomic adjustment and îscal consolidation that were the con-ditions for the loans. The debt to private creditors should be considered illegal because private banks conducted themselves ir-responsibly before the Troika came into being, failing to observe due diligence, while some private creditors such as hedge funds also acted in bad faith. Parts of the debts to private banks and hedge funds are illegiti-mate for the same reasons that they are illegal; further-more, Greek banks were illegitimately recapitalized by tax-payers. Debts to private banks and hedge funds are odious, since major private creditors were aware that these debts were not incurred in the best interests of the population but rather for their own beneît. The report comes to a close with some practical con-siderations. Chapter 9, Legal foundations for repudiation and suspension of the Greek sovereign debt, pre-sents the options concerning the cancellation of debt, and especially the conditions under which a sovereign

5

state can exercise the right to unilateral act of repu-diation or suspension of the payment of debt under international law. Several legal arguments permit a State to unilater-ally repudiate its illegal, odious, and illegitimate debt. In the Greek case, such a unilateral act may be based on the following arguments: the bad faith of the creditors that pushed Greece to violate national law and interna-tional obligations related to human rights; preeminence of human rights over agreements such as those signed by previous governments with creditors or the Troika; coercion; unfair terms agrantly violating Greek sov-ereignty and violating the Constitution; and înally, the right recognized in international law for a State to take countermeasures against illegal acts by its creditors, which purposefully damage its îscal sovereignty, oblige it to assume odious, illegal and illegitimate debt, violate economic self-determination and fundamental human rights. As far as unsustainable debt is concerned, every state is legally entitled to invoke necessity in excep-tional situations in order to safeguard those essential interests threatened by a grave and imminent peril. In such a situation, the State may be dispensed from the fulîlment of those international obligations that aug-ment the peril, as is the case with outstanding loan contracts. Finally, states have the right to declare them-selves unilaterally insolvent where the servicing of their debt is unsustainable, in which case they commit no wrongful act and hence bear no liability. People’s dignity is worth more than illegal, illegiti-mate, odious and unsustainable debt Having concluded its preliminary investigation, the Committee considers that Greece has been and still is the victim of an attack premeditated and organized by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. This violent, ille-gal, and immoral mission aimed exclusively at shiing private debt onto the public sector. Making this preliminary report available to the Greek authorities and the Greek people, the Commit-tee considers to have fulîlled the îrst part of its mis-sion as deîned in the decision of the President of the Hellenic Parliament of 4 April 2015. The Committee hopes that the report will be a useful tool for those who want to exit the destructive logic of austerity and stand up for what is endangered today: human rights, democracy, peoples’ dignity, and the future of gener-ations to come. In response to those who impose unjust measures, the Greek people might invoke what Thucydides men-tioned about the constitution of the Athenian people: “As for the name, it is called a democracy, for the adminis-tration is run with a view to the interests of the many, not of the few” (Pericles’ Funeral Oration, in the speech from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War).

Contents 7 Introduction The work of the Truth 8 Committee in Public Debt Deﬁnition of terms 10 and acronyms Chapter 1:Debt 11 before the Troika Chapter 2:Evolution of the Greek 17 public debt during 2010-2015 Chapter 3:Greek public debt 22 by creditor in 2015 Chapter 4:Debt 29 mechanism in Greece Chapter 5:The conditionalities 33 against sustainability Chapter 6:The impact of the “bailout 37 programme” on human rights Chapter 7:Legal issues surrounding 45 the MOU and Loan Agreements Chapter 8:Assessment of the debt as regards 51 illegitimacy, odiousness, illegality and unsustainability Chapter 9:Legal foundations for repudiation 57 and suspension of Greek sovereign debt

6

Introduction ince May 2010, Greece has been imple-full range of legal, social, and economic issues that menting a macroeconomic adjustment pro-demand proper consideration in relation to the debt, S gramme as a condition for accessing “î-and also to raise awareness among Greek citizens, nancial assistance” from the Internationalthe international community, and international public Monetary Fund, fourteen eurozone Member statesopinion. represented by the European Commission, the Eu-This preliminary report, available in Greek and Eng-ropean Financial Stability Facility, and the Europeanlish, presents the main îndings of the Committee in the Central Bank. The programme consists of neoliberalîrst phase of its work. It is expected that the îndings policy measures that involve deep spending and jobof the Committee will raise issues that will be further cuts in the public sector, extended deregulation of the analysed and investigated in the second phase, over private sector, tax increases, privatizations, and struc-the course of the year ahead. The îndings presented tural changes (misleadingly called “reforms”). here are preliminary and as the Committee continues These internationally imposed measures, suppos- its proceedings, the analysis is expected to be further edly aimed at reducing the country’s budget deîcit corroborated, articulated and reîned. and public debt to sustainable levels, have pushed the The primary aim of this preliminary report is to high-economy into a deep recession - the longest recessionlight key areas of contention, and to deîne speciîc is-experienced in Europe during a period of peace. Millions sues that need to be brought into public consideration. were thrown into poverty, unemployment, and social Aer this introductory section, which presents the exclusion, while human rights, particularly econom-context and methodology of our analysis as well as the ic and social rights, were grossly undermined. Public deînitions of illegal, illegitimate, odious, and unsus-services and infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, tainable debt, the rest of the report is structured as courts, and municipalities around the country have been follows. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the development of merged, shut-down, or otherwise suocated, in order the Greek public debt between 1980 and 2015. Chap-to achieve îscal targets speciîed by the creditors that ter 3 traces key characteristics of the current credi-have been widely criticized as unacceptable and unreal-tors of Greece. Chapter 4 presents a summary of the istic. Human lives, the social fabric, the state structure, debt mechanisms related to the agreements signed by and the natural environment suered wounds that will Greece and the Troika since 2010. Chapters 5 and 6 an-take a long time to heal, or are irreversible, as is the alyse the conditionalities attached to the loan facility case for those who lost or took their own lives during and other agreements, as well as their impact on the the memoranda period, when the suicide rate rose to sustainability of debt from both a human rights and a unprecedented levels. macroeconomic perspective. Chapter 7 proceeds to the In response to this situation, and within the frame- legal issues regarding the Memoranda of Understand-work of the Parliament’s responsibility to the Greeking and the Loan Agreements, and examines how they people, on 4 April 2015, the President of the Hellenic were developed and adopted. Chapter 8 provides an Parliament decided to establish a Special Committeeassessment of the Greek public debt based on the deî-of the Hellenic Parliament. The Truth Committee on nitions of illegitimate, odious, illegal, and unsustainable Public Debt, or Debt Truth Committee, was given the debt as adopted by the Committee during its Plenary mandate to investigate the truth about the creationSession of May 4-7th, 2015. Finally, aer this analysis and the intolerable increase of the public debt, as well of the multifaceted issues related to the Greek public as to audit the debt, and to promote the international debt, Chapter 9 concludes and presents the options cooperation of the Hellenic Parliament with the Euro- concerning the cancellation of debt, and especially the pean Parliament and the Parliaments of other coun- conditions under which a sovereign state can exercise tries, as well as with International Organizations, inthe right to unilateral repudiation or suspension of matters of debt. The Committee aims to address the payment of debt under international law.

7

The Work of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

Context The decision to create the Truth Committee and re-alize an audit of the Greek public debt is justiîed for three main reasons. First, the audit of the public debt is a basic demo-cratic right of citizens as well as a sovereign right of a nation. There can be no democracy without transpar-ency regarding state înances, and it is immoral to ask citizens to pay for debt without knowing how and why this debt was created. It is also very important to audit the debt because substantial sacriîces are demand-ed from and/or imposed on the Greek society and the Greek state in order to honour the payment of debt. Second, debt audit is also an institutional duty of the State according to European law. It responds to the obligation created by Regulation (EU) No. 472/2013 of the Eu-ropeanand Parliament ofthe Council on 21 May 2013, which enjoins a Mem-ber State sub-ject to a mac-roeconomic adjustment programme to “carr y out a com-prehensive audit of its public înanc-es in order, inter alia, to as-sess the reasons that led to the build-up ofexcessive levels of debt as well as to track any possible irregularity” (Paragraph 9 of Article 7). This obligation was entirely neglected by the previous Greek governments and the Troika in-stitutions. Third, debt audit is also an obligation stemming from international law. The United Nations Guiding Princi-ples on Foreign Debt and Human Rights (A/HRC/20/23), adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in July 2012, calls upon States to undertake periodic audits of their public debt, in order to ensure transparency and ac-countability in the management of their resources, and also to inform future borrowing decisions. A central objective of the Truth Committee on Pub-

8

lic Debt is to respond to the United Nations call for transparency and accountability in the management of resources. Another objective is to explain to the Greek people how and why the debt, whose onerous repay-ment has been demanded from them during the last îve years, was created and managed.

Composition of the Truth Committee on Public Debt The Truth Committee on Public Debt is an independ-ent Committee, created by the President of the Hellen-ic Parliament under a Regulation thereof. It is chaired by the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Zoe Kon-stantopoulou, its scientiîc coordinator, Professor Eric Toussaint and MEP Soîa Sakorafa, responsible for its relations with the European Parliament and other Par-liaments and Institutions. It comprises members from Greece and ten other countries. Most have internation-ally recognized competence, expertise and experience in the subject matters of audit, public debt, human rights protection, international law, constitutional law, inter-national înance, macroeconomics, anti-corruption and transparency guarantees; others contribute the rich and precious experience of local or international social movements. The Committee also receives the cooper-ation of experts and authorities, as well as of Parlia-ment services and society at large. The work of the Committee is open to society and to those who wish to contribute as experts, witnesses, sources, or members. Indeed, during the îrst two months of the Committee’s work, there have been considerable oers of contribu-tion, which have been or will be taken into account. The members of the Committee oer their workex gratia, and they did not, do not, and will not receive any remu-neration for their work.

Mandate and Objectives of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

The Truth Committee was given the mandate to ex-amine the nature of Greek public debt, as well as the historical, înancial, and other processes related to the contracting and accumulation of debt; also to identify what part or proportion of the debt can be deîned as illegitimate, illegal, odious, or unsustainable. The Truth Committee designs the debt audit in a manner conducive to enhancing transparency and ac-countability in the management of Greek public înanc-es. It also formulates arguments and traces the legal foundations concerning the cancellation of the debt.

LimitationsDuring the îrst two months of their work, the mem-bers of the Truth Committee worked intensively in order to carry out the analysis of public debt and present the preliminary conclusions in this report. However, this time frame is not suïcient to fully analyse the mech-anisms of debt accumulation in Greece for the whole period from 1980 to 2015. Therefore, the Truth Com-mittee had to prioritise the issues and in particular the periods to be examined as a matter of urgency. Furthermore, the Truth Committee has not yet re-ceived all the legal and oïcial documents that are necessary to corroborate its îndings and analyze all aspects of the Greek debt; it also takes note of the fact that, in an initial answer to the Committee, the Bank of Greece, through its Director, refused to transmit documents, which are essential to the audit. The Com-mittee will insist that these documents (namely bank transactions concerning the loan agreements) are duly transmitted to it. In the coming months, we expect to enjoy the full collaboration of the Greek institutions in-volved in the administration of public debt, especially in providing all legal documents, data, and accountability registers which will help us to complete the audit and accountability procedures. Nevertheless, the work carried out by the Truth Com-mittee to date allows us to present some important preliminary îndings and policy implications. These pre-liminary îndings shed new light on issues of debt, and demonstrate the importance of further investigations and audit procedures. Therefore, the Committee will continue pursuing its work during the coming months, and is expected to present its înal report by May 2016.

The time frame of analysis

One of the goals of the Truth Committee is to pres-ent a complete overview of the evolution of the Greek public debt from 1980 to 2015, accompanied by an anal-ysis of the trends, processes, and operating cycles of the transactions that gave rise to such liabilities, that can be reached through the procedures of a debt audit. Given the time limitations, in the îrst phase of the audit the Truth Committee prioritized the examination of the Memoranda period from May 2010 until January 2015 in this preliminary report of 17-18 June 2015. The institutions and procedures that came to the fore in the Memoranda Period did not appearex nihilo. Our preliminary analyses of the period from 1980 to 2010, concerning in particular certain incidents of con-spicuous corruption, which burdened the public budget,

demonstrate the importance of further investigations and audit procedures. These will form part of our work in the second phase.

Objectives of report This report is addressed to the authorities of the Hellenic Republic, but not only to them. As mentioned previously, an objective of this report is to raise the awareness of the Greek population, the international community, and the international public opinion. In or-der to fulîll this objective, while remaining rigorous, the Committee decided to spare no eorts to make this document widely accessible to the public. This implied in particular the need to remain concise; a document of several hundred pages would not manage to achieve this objective. But it also meant making eorts to avoid obfuscation. We try to explain our points in clear and non-technical language, particularly as regards the more technical aspects. Only in this way can the Report be read by people without specialist technical knowl-edge, who however form the bulk of any society, and participate as they must in democratic deliberation. It is exactly for this reason that some documents deal-ing with rather technical aspects or analysing in more depth some key points presented in this Report will be posted online in their complete version.

Sources of documents and data Oïcial documents and data are essential in order to reach the truth about the process of accumulation of Greek public debt. In order to fulîll its mission, the Committee used and analyzed the following documents and data (non-exhaustive list): ■documents such as contracts, treaties, Oïcial agreements, programs, memoranda; ■Annual reports of the ECB, Bank of Greece, HFSF; ■Oïcial statistics from Eurostat, ELSTAT, OECD, Bank of Greece, Ministry of Finance, Public Debt Manage-ment Agency, European Commission; ■ Academic journal articles, research reports, and newspapers; ■ Public hearings of witnesses; ■Meetings with the authorities; ■Criminal case île transmitted to the Hellenic Parlia-ment by the economic crime prosecutors (September – November 2012) concerning public statements of for-mer Greek representative to the IMF, Mr. P. Roumeliotis.

9

Deﬁnition of terms In this report, the following terms have the mean-ings respectively assigned to them hereunder: Illegitimate debt Debt that the borrower cannot be required to repay because the loan, security or guarantee, or the terms and conditions attached to that loan, se-curity or guarantee infringed the law (both national and international) or public policy, or because such terms or conditions were grossly unfair, unreason-able, unconscionable or otherwise objectionable, or because the conditions attached to the loan, secu-rity or guarantee included policy prescriptions that violate national laws or human rights standards, or because the loan, security or guarantee was not used for the beneît of the population or the debt was converted from private (commercial) to public debt under pressure to bailout creditors. Illegal debt Debt in respect of which proper legal proce-dures (including those relating to authority to sign loans or approval of loans, securities or guarantees by the representative branch or branches of Gov-ernment of the borrower State) were not followed, or which involved clear misconduct by the lender (including bribery, coercion and undue inuence), as well as debt contracted in violation of domestic and international law or had conditions attached thereto that contravened the law or public policy. Odious debt Debt, which the lender knew or ought to have known, was incurred in violation of democratic principles (including consent, participation, trans-parency and accountability), and used against the best interests of the population of the borrower State, or is unconscionable and whose eect is to deny people their fundamental civil, political, eco-nomic, social and cultural rights. Unsustainable debt Debt that cannot be serviced without seriously impairing the ability or capacity of the Govern-ment of the borrower State to fulîl its basic hu-man rights obligations, such as those relating to healthcare, education, water and sanitation and adequate housing, or to invest in public infrastruc-ture and programmes necessary for economic and social development, or without harmful conse-quences for the population of the borrower State (including a deterioration in the living standards). Such debt is payable but its payment ought to be suspended in order to allow the state to fulîl its human rights commitments.

reece’s public debt is a legacy of past trends. This îrst chapter analyses the growth of the ■GRather than being a product of high public budget Greek debt since the early 1980s. Our main îndings are the following: deîcits, the increase of debt was clearly related to the growth in interest payments. Greece entered the crisis with a debt inherited over the period of debt accumu-lation of 1980-1993; the main contributor to debt ac-cumulation was the ‘snowball eect’ – present when the implicit interest rate on the debt is higher than GDP nominal growth. This explains two thirds of the increase of debt between 1980 and 2007. ■Public expenditure was lower than that of other Eurozone members. The only primary public spending which was higher (as a ratio to GDP) was in defence ex-penditures, about which a series of corruption scandals need to be further investigated. The excessive spending in defence constitutes €40 billion of the debt created from 1995 to 2009. ■Primary deîcits feeding the debt have been fur-ther aected by poor performance in income tax col-lection and employers’ contributions to social security collection. These were much lower than the rest of Eu-rozone, and are attributed to fraud and illicit capital ows - explained below - beneîting only a minority of the population. The cumulative losses due to these two types of income from 1995 to 2009 explain the remain-ing growth of debt. ■Illicit capital outows provoked further tax reve-nue loss, amounting to €30 billion from 2003 to 2009. This was accompanied by lower amounts of spending for other expenditures, like social security, education and R&D as compared to other EU countries. ■Adopting the euro led to a drastic increase of pri-vate debt, from 74.1% to 129.1% of GDP, to which major European private banks, as well as Greek banks, were exposed. This provoked a banking crisis in 2009, which triggered the Greek sovereign debt crisis.

1. The growth of the debt: an overview Three distinct phases can be observed in the evolu-tion of public debt between 1981 and 2009 (Figure 1.1): ■1981-1993: aer Greece joined the European Un-ion in 1981, we observe a strong increase of public debt, from 25% to 91% of GDP. ■1993-2007: quasi-stabilization from 91% to 103% of GDP. During this period, Greece enters into the Euro-zone in 2001 with a debt of 100% of GDP and a deîcit 1 close to 3%, which will be impugned in 2004 . ■2007-2009: sharp increase from 103% to 113% 2 which, aer a contestedstatistical revision, jumps to 127% of GDP, amounting to approximately €300 billion euros.